Abstract
Sensorimotor theories understand perception to be a process of active, exploratory engagement with the environment, mediated by the possession and exercise of a certain body of knowledge concerning sensorimotor dependencies. This paper aims to characterise that exercise, and to show that it places constraints upon the content of sensorimotor knowledge itself. Sensorimotor mastery is exercised when it is put to use in the service of intentional action-planning and selection, and this rules out certain standard readings of sensorimotor contingency knowledge. Rather than holding between movements and sensory inputs or appearances, sensorimotor contingencies concern the suite of ways in which an object can be revealed through exploration. Sensorimotor knowledge is thus directed through experience to the world itself.
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Notes
See Schellenberg's (2007) "sentient-statue" objection for more on these possibilities
The exception being, perhaps, hypothetical cases in which an object is entirely enveloped by part of a creature's body
Although there may be a suite of movements of the hands and fingers that is characteristic of the tactile perception of a cube; an activity that enables the agent to keep her fingertips in contact with the surface of the object, for example. This feature seems to be peculiar to the tactile modality, though, and renders it an unhelpful model for the others
Noë (2002, 2004, 2009a) can be read as adopting this view, as when the content of experience is described as 'two dimensional' (2009a, p2), and through the use of examples, like that of the post-operative cataract patient, that appear to fit this model naturally. However, Noë's account of the two-dimensionality of experience is given an importantly nuanced treatment in his response to Campbell, Martin, and Kelly (Noë 2008), where both 'levels' of content are understood as direct encounters with parts of the environment, and neither is given precedence over the other.
The two-tier construal should be distanced, too, from subpersonal, computational treatments of vision (e.g. Marr 1982), on which multiple levels of content are iterated into an overall perceptual representation. Intermediate levels of content, on views of that sort, do not come about through the exercise of the perceiver's sensorimotor skills, but through subpersonal processing
In certain cases, knowledge of appearances does seem to figure in intentional behaviour, as when a sniper gauges the aim of his rifle according to the apparent size and shape of a distant target viewed through a telescope, or when an artist judges the proportions of his painting according to apparent sizes in the visual field (thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pressing this point, and for these examples). These, I suggest, involve expertise concerning a specialised domain, and do not show that such knowledge forms a part of everyday experience
If the healthy circle here can be sustained, then I offer my characterisation of the exercise of sensorimotor understanding as compatible with, rather than a competitor to, Noë's direct realist model
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Roberts, T. Understanding ‘sensorimotor understanding’. Phenom Cogn Sci 9, 101–111 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-009-9125-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-009-9125-7